"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wrought havoc in their columns; the pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... uprights (jacal); or it may be a mere shed. There are also regular log-cabins encountered with locked corners, especially among the southern Tarahumares. Finally, when a Tarahumare becomes civilised, he builds himself a house of stone and mud, with a roof of boards, or thatch, or earth. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... timber grown in New Guinea, which must be much larger than any trees we saw growing on the island. After a short delay I was carried by some native policemen through a little village consisting of a few circular and oblong houses made of plaited grass and thatch, all of which had been so familiar to one's eyes in the South Seas. It was quite like old times to see these dwellings again, and some of them were actually occupied by genuine South Sea Islanders—Kanakas. The men of these ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of suspicion at her from under the black thatch of brows that met above his nose and were as ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... threw his leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one who performs ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... dead, but for the gods, and is intended to secure their good offices for the departed. While a Tagbanua corpse is above ground it is liable to be eaten by a vampire called the balbal that lives on Mindanao, has the form of a man with wings and great claws, tears open the thatch of houses and consumes bodies by means of a long tongue, which it thrusts through the opening in the roof. These Tagbanuas do not believe in a heaven in the skies, because, they say, you could not get up there. When a man dies ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... soon come pattering through the leaves. It was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of the open plain. This happened only where the path lay much upon the slope, and there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood at some distance below the level at which I chanced myself to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of foreshortened distance, miniature fields, and Lilliputian houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment in the aperture, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "'Ain't got room fer one under his yaller thatch. You wait till you set your lamps on him once before you go to gettin' excited. Why, he ain't one-two-three with our missionary! Gosh! I wish he'd come back an' see ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... that season, took up his quarters at Genabum, a town of the Carnutes; and lodged his men in houses, partly belonging to the Gauls, and partly built to shelter the tents, and hastily covered with thatch. But the horse and auxiliaries he sends to all parts to which he was told the enemy had marched; and not without effect, as our men generally returned loaded with booty. The Carnutes, overpowered by the severity of the winter, and the fear of danger, and not daring to continue ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... face in Anne's shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly thatch at Marilla. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trouble to fish them out again. The place was next set on fire in every direction, when the party, each man carrying such booty as he had managed to pick up, left the fort to the destruction awaiting it. The flames spread amid the wooden and thatch-roof buildings, till the surrounding stockades caught fire, and the whole hornets' nest was one sea ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... bought on which to build a chapel, and in 1788 the first Methodist church in Canada was built at Point de Bute. It stood somewhat back from the road in the present cemetery. The house was of stone, with a roof of thatch. The following is the deed of the property on which the ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... then, faith, sure enough, As the pig was desaiced, 'twas high time to be off. So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch, Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch, Then tuk laave of each other's sweet lips in the dark, And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark; The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone! And poor I wid myself, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... to be real, with its rows of Elizabethan cottages whose windows twinkled at us with their diamond-shaped, diamond-bright panes, sparkling under their low, thatch-eyebrows, from between black oak beams. The Tudor chimneys were as graceful as the smoke wreaths that lazily spiraled above them, and the whole effect was—was—well, inexpressibly Birket Foster. I used ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses' thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the only date I could ever get out of you, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... little room under the thatch she flung herself face downwards on the bed, and lay tense. What should she do? What should she do? He had seen her. He was on her track. Sooner or later he would run her to earth. And she—what ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... descendant Look (thick) as thatch, and (swelling) like a carriage-cover. His stacks will stand like islands and mounds. He will seek for thousands of granaries; He will seek for tens of thousands of carts. The millets, the paddy, and the maize Will awake the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... insthructed be you, Larry Doyle. Some people think no one knows anythin but dhemselves. [To Broadbent, deferentially] Of course I know a gentleman like you would not compare me to the yeomanry. Me own granfather was flogged in the sthreets of Athenmullet be them when they put a gun in the thatch of his house an then went and found it there, bad cess ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... a ruin since I saw it last. The winter's winds had lifted the thatch, and the wall on one side had tumbled in. There was no sign of the old life we lived there. The little window from which the guiding light had shone so often was fallen to pieces. Even the friendly hearth within was filled with ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... some time I might attain this joy—that this book might find shelter beneath roofs of thatch, and that the village girls, as they spin and turn the wheel, humming the while their much-loved verses, of the girl who so loved to make music that while fiddling she lost her geese, or of the orphan, who, fair as the dawn, went to drive home the birds at eventide—if even those village ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... music heard in a dream. Art, in establishing instruments for human life beyond the human body, and moulding outer things into sympathy with inner values, establishes a ground whence values may continually spring up; the thatch that protects from to-day's rain will last and keep out to-morrow's rain also; the sign that once expresses an idea will serve to recall it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... burnin' a stack?" remonstrated Andrew, blinking defiantly round the table. "Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute"— he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin—"It was this way: I was jist startin' to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o' mine, on the Vic. side o' the Murray, when up comes ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn: thy ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... ground, they have a very imposing effect, unlike any inhabited by persons of the same rank in England. But close even to the palaces of the most wealthy are to be seen wretched mud huts; and rows of native hovels, constructed of mats, thatch, and bamboos, often rest against their outer walls, while there are avenues opening from the principal streets, intersected in all directions by native bazaars, filled with unsightly ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... years. He tried to do it, and worked till noon, but the filth was as bad as ever. Then the Giant's youngest daughter came, and bid him sleep, and she cleaned out the stable, so that a golden apple would run from end to end of it. Next day the Giant set him to thatch the byre with birds' down, and he had to go out on the moors to catch the birds; but at midday, he had caught only two blackbirds, and then the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and bid him sleep, and then she caught the birds, and thatched the byre with the feathers ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... mother of Mrs. Belknap-Jackson; I mean to say, the confirmed Mixer—an elderly person of immense bulk in gray walking-skirt, heavy boots, and a flowered blouse that was overwhelming. Her face, under her grayish thatch of hair, was broad and smiling, the eyes keen, the mouth wide, and the nose rather a bit blobby. Although at every point she was far from vogue, she impressed me not unpleasantly. Even her voice, a magnificently ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a new class in Germany, but many of the evils of their position are new. They are more dependent on ready money than formerly; thus, where a peasant used to get his wood for building and firing from the common forest, he has now to pay for it with hard cash; he used to thatch his own house, with the help perhaps of a neighbor, but now he pays a man to do it for him; he used to pay taxes in kind, he now pays them in money. The chances of the market have to be discounted, and the peasant falls into the hands of money-lenders. Here ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... near-by journeys of ours. The August moon was big and hot and late in rising; there was a rick of old hay in a clean-looking field by the roadside that had evidently been used as winter fodder for young cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, leaving a protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very substantial, but sufficient shelter for a still night. Then and there we decided to play gypsy and camp out, literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the horse, watered him at a convenient roadside puddle, and tethered ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... particularly enumerated, or otherwise charged with duty, not being articles wholly or in part made up; magna-grocia ware; manuscripts; maps, and charts; matresses; meat, (salted or fresh), not otherwise described; medals; palmetto-thatch manufactures; parchment; pens; plantains; potatoes; pork, fresh and salted; silk, thrown or dyed, viz., silk, single or tram, organzine, or crape-silk; thread, not otherwise enumerated or described; woollens, viz., manufactures of wool, not being goats' wool, or of wool ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone; it would have its windows and its ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the magic song which attracted the boor from his thatch under the hill, and the goat-herd from ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... as if I were casting up an account. Many a time in those days I studied my appearance in the glass like a foolish maid. I was not well featured, having a freckled, square face, a biggish head, a blunt nose, grey, colourless eyes, and a sandy thatch of hair, I had great square shoulders, but my arms were too short for my stature, and—from an accident in my nursing days—of indifferent strength. All this stood on the debit side of my account. On the credit ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... from the many temples, water-terraces, and ghats on the city side: opposite is a great sandy plain. The town below looks a mass of poor, square, flat-roofed houses, of which 12,000 are brick, and 16,000 mud and thatch, through the crowd of which, and of small temples, the eye wanders in vain for some attractive feature or evidence of the wealth, the devotion, the science, or the grandeur of a city celebrated throughout the East for all these attributes. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... upon your knee, Your tired knee that has so much to bear; A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch Of warm, moist fingers, folding yours so tight; You do not prize this blessing overmuch,— You almost are too tired to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Max, as he stared at a rough, whitewashed hovel, thatched, and covered with hazel rods tied down to keep the thatch ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... that," said Bunting slowly. "Regular right-down queer. Leetle touched, you know, under the thatch," and, as he tapped his head significantly, both young people ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door. Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch. Companion of his solitary ways, Purveyor of his feasts on holidays, On him this melancholy man bestowed The love with which his nature overflowed. And so the empty-handed years went round, Vacant, though voiceful with prophetic sound, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the blushing dewdrops falter; The peacock wakes and leaves the cottage thatch; A deer is rising near the hoof-marked altar, And stretching, stands, the day's new ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... brown head showed just above the tall back of the old-fashioned pew. The sun shining through the long windows on the side of the church shone upon Neale's thick thatch of hair with iridescent glory. Whenever he moved his head, the hue of the hair seemed to change—like a piece of ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, they will need," he added after a minute, "and it is unlikely that the Senor Seem'son understands the making of a thatch. Diego and Juan are skillful; and the tules they lay upon a roof will let no drop of rain fall within the room. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... famous isle, standeth, which is seven miles every way, and whereunto there is no access but by three causies, whose inhabitants in like sort by an old privilege may take wood, sedge turf, etc., to burn, likewise hay for their cattle and thatch for their houses of custom, and each occupier in his appointed quantity throughout the isle; albeit that covetousness hath now begun somewhat to abridge this large benevolence and commodity, as well in the said isle as most other places ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... direct into life itself—that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead souls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves of the living. How many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed thoughts and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my forehead, I don't know. But I believe a good many. And I hope they have a good time. And I hope not too ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... he hung there, clawing with his feet like a cat on a clothesline, but presently a piece of the thatch came away, and Mr. Philander, preceding it, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... never exhibited any tendency to depart from the primitive simplicity so strongly enjoined by their founder; and, down to the present time, the homes of the Buddhist priesthood are modest and humble structures generally reared of mud and thatch, with no pretension to external beauty and no attempt ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... draught of air drew down under the foliage in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. In front it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been kindled outside. With the rapidity of lightning the flame ran up the stream that continued to flow, igniting the whole of the spirits in the cask, which blew up with a tremendous explosion, darting the fiery liquid over the whole interior, and communicating the flame to the thatch, and every part of the building, which was instantaneously in ardent combustion. The shrieks of the poor disabled wretches, stretched on the sails, to which the fire had communicated, and who were now lying in a molten sea of flame like that described in Pandemonium by Milton—the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... foresee and croak th' event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak when they're taught, and so to vote. When rogues like these (a Sparrow cries) To honour and employment rise I court no favour, ask no place, From such, preferment is disgrace: Within my thatch'd retreat I find (What these ne'er feel) true peace ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... thatch to cover the roofs of the houses, or shelter over their boats. Neatly fastened together with split rattans, they form the walls of the house. From the juice of the tree they make a fermented drink something like sweet beer, also ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... And in truth Mr. Havisham was beginning to be greatly interested; but perhaps not quite so much in Dick and the apple-woman as in this kind little lordling, whose curly head was so busy, under its yellow thatch, with good-natured plans for his friends, and who seemed somehow ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only remnants of the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... broken sheds, all sad and strange. He shoo-ed them from the clinking latch, And from the weeded, ancient thatch, Upon the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... the Hervey Islanders (p. 17 of notes): "The state is conceived of as a long house standing east and west, chiefs from the north and south sides of the island representing left and right; under chiefs the rafters; individuals the leaves of the thatch. These are the counterpart of the actual house (of the gods) in the spirit world." Compare Stair, ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... walls upholding reaches of silvery-oak weather-boarding; buttresses of mixed flint and bricks; outside stairs, stone upon arched stone; curves of thatch where grass sprouted; roundels of house-leeked tiles, and a huge paved yard populated by two cows and the repentant Rambler. He had not thought of himself or of the telegraph office for ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the farmers live on better food than they had twenty years ago, but I should think that there has been little improvement in the little thatch-roofed houses in which they live. These houses are grouped into small villages, as are the farm houses in Europe, the farmer going out from the settlement to his fields each working day, much after the fashion of the workers on the largest American plantations. Buildings corresponding ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... under his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow; The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, He seemed ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... 17th-and 18th-century ice pits in England. This pit which lies 250 feet east of the Visitor Center may have served a spacious house which once stood nearby. It may be assumed that the missing surface structure was circular, probably of brick, had a small door, and was roofed over with thatch or sod for insulation. ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... off. In November the plants that show signs of heading are stripped of the larger outer leaves, then taken up and set close together in beds and covered with hot-bed sash. In cold weather straw or thatch is added. In this way the plants continue to give heads until February. Plants which have begun to head may be taken up in the same way and set in a cellar. Just enough moisture should be given to keep them from wilting, as, if too much is given, they are liable ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... thatched, and which, as it could easily be set on fire by arrows with burning tips, was likely to prove dangerous. The considerable force we brought enabled these operations to be rapidly carried on. The thatch was conveyed to a distance from the house, that it might not be employed for smoking us out, while all the men able to use saws and hammers set to work to fit and nail up the timbers. Every door and window was so strongly barricaded, that a ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... patronage. It was housed in a recess in the wall of the traveling trench, and was open to the sky. There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... and herds which should have been grazing somewhere on the plain or the foothills ahead, not a horn or a hoof was to be seen. Also, the house looked different: it had the appearance of being not as high as usual; I could not see the grey thatch of its roof; and the walls, instead of being pure white, as they had been when I last saw them, were white only in comparatively small patches, the remainder being brown, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the world yearly visit this relic of Old Shanklin. Pretty thatched cottages can be seen in many parts of the Island, but nowhere is there such a combination, there being three different styles of roof in thatch, the setting in a background of trees completing the illusion of the country. In the angle where the figures stand is the rustic fountain on which hangs the shield with the verse written by the poet Longfellow when staying at Hollier's Hotel, ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... stern faces of those who held them as lightning does. But soon there was to be light. If any had leisure to observe, they may have seen flakes of fire flying upwards from the dim bush, and wondered what they were. They were bunches of burning grass being thrown on spears to fall in the thatch of the hospital roof. Presently something could be seen on this roof that shone like a star. It grew dim, then suddenly began to brighten and to increase till the star-like spot was a flame, and a hoarse cry passed from man to man of: 'O God! ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... ideal person with whom to be wrecked on a desert island. A flirt, and engaged, too, was she? No matter. He wrecked himself with her, and they lived on mussels and edible roots and berries, and some canned stuff from the ship, and he built a hut of "native thatch," and found a deposit of rubies, gathering bushels of them, and he became her affianced the very day the smoke of the rescuing steamer blackened the horizon. And throughout an idyllic union they always thought rather regretfully ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... long shed of uniform height on each side of the road. Each habitation had a small low door, which alone showed the number of separate dwellings in a row. The sides were composed of broad strips of bark, and bamboo leaves served for the thatch. Here and there were larger houses built of bamboo, with raised floors, marking the residences of chief men. At last they reached a house nearly a hundred feet in length, and, having ascended some steps, Jack found himself ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... type of Celt. The wild thatch of his scrubbing-brush hair shone purple in the light. Scrape his face as he would, the purple shadow of his beard seemed ingrained in his white white skin. Black-browed and black-lashed, he had the luminous blue-gray-green eyes of the colleen. There was a curious untamable ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... that thatch is not uncommon in the Stura valley. In the Val Mastallone, and more especially between Civiasco (above Varallo) and Orta, thatch is more common still, and the thatching is often very beautifully done. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... with a pale face and a lot of light thatch on it, with fine ways that she picked up in Carlisle.' But when I came to see you, I thought that if I had had to describe you, those were just the things I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... There are a great number of palm trees of a different kind from those in Guinea and from ours, of a middling height, the trunks without that covering, and the leaves very large, with which they thatch their houses. The country is very level." The Admiral jumped into his boat and went on shore. He came to two houses, which he believed to belong to fishermen who had fled from fear. In one of them he found a kind of dog that ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... was at this time erected, to the material of which every man, woman, and child contributed something, even if only a stick or a reed of thatch. Some were drafted off to put up the house, and the rest commenced to fight in real earnest, and settle any old grudges with each other. He who got the most wounds was set down for special favours from the god. With the completion ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... destitution, and on a tract which had probably once been part of the Bog itself, there stood—there stands still—a short, square tower, battlemented at top, and surmounted with a pointed roof, which seems to grow out of a cluster of farm-buildings, so surrounded is its base by roofs of thatch and slates. Incongruous, vulgar, and ugly in every way, the old keep appears to look down on them—time-worn and battered as it is—as might a reduced gentleman regard the unworthy associates with which an altered fortune had ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... neighbourhood a plantation of mango and other fruit-trees. It had, I was told, been planted only three years ago by Hiraman and Motiram, and I sent for them, knowing that they would be pleased to have their good work noticed by any European gentleman. The trees are now covered with cones of thatch to shelter them from the frost. The merchants came, evidently much pleased, and I had a good deal of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... from the dream, more especially as head and limbs were still heavy, weary, and battered. The strange roaring still sounded, and sometimes seemed to shake the bed. Twilight was coming in at a curtained window, and showed a tiny chamber, with rafters overhead and thatch, a chest, a chair, and table. There was a pallet on the floor, and Anne suspected that she had been wakened by the rising of its occupant. Her watch was on the chair by her side, but it had not been ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the shepherdess, "what here in this strange place? No, that I shall not, I can tell you. I never slept from under the thatch of my father's cottage in my life, but once, and that was at the wedding of my dear, obliging Rovena. But perhaps," added she, "my father and mother will come to me here. So I will even try and be compilable, for I never was obstinate. But indeed my head ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to his back, lest he might be tempted to eat ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... as in Norfolk, no stone was to be had, then of flint, as in so many of our church towers. Usually, however, the manor house was built in great part of timber. The poorer houses were dirty hovels, run up "anyhow," sometimes covered with turf, sometimes with thatch. None of them had chimneys. Six hundred years ago houses with chimneys were at least as rare as houses heated by hot-water pipes are now. Moreover, there were no brick houses. It is a curious fact that ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... anticipated, for in the evening, during the night, and early in the morning, the Dwarf had laboured so hard, and with such ingenuity, that he had nearly completed the adjustment of the rafters. His next labour was to cut rushes and thatch his dwelling, a task which he performed with ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... account of his being three-parts drunk most of the time. At last the rain was coming in through the roof. When Anthony saw that he came to himself a bit and sent for my grandfather and settled with him to put a few patches of new thatch on the worst places. My grandfather was the best man at thatching that there was in the island in them days, and he took the job though he misdoubted whether he'd ever be paid for it. Anthony never came next or nigh him when he was working, which shows that he hadn't got his senses ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... roof, and eaves projecting some feet from the walls, and reaching nearly to the ground, except where the door was. The small casements of the upper story, if there were any, were completely hidden. A row of fleur-de-lis was springing up, green and glossy, along the peak of the brown thatch; this and the picturesque eaves forming its only beauty. The thatch looked old and rotten, and was beginning to steam in the warm sunshine. The unpaved yard about it was a slough of mire and mud. There were mould and mildew upon all the wood-work. The place bore the aspect ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... ones besides, for a good heart had the eldest brother, though only a brickmaker. The poor thing built her house with her own hands; it was very narrow, its one window was all on one side, the door was too low, and the thatch on the roof might have been laid on better, but it gave her shelter and a home, and could be seen far over the sea, which sometimes burst over the trench in its might, and sprinkled a salt shower over the little house, which kept its place there years after he who made the bricks ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... westering sun, was a beaten gold and remodeled to unfamiliar lines. Well known cat's-claw and cactus clumps had disappeared. A sand drift a foot in length covered the well curb. A drift that touched the thatch lay against the east side of the cook tent and had spilled within, half burying the tables and benches. Within the living tent, sand lay thick on trunks and cots. But the tents had ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... a long thicket of these oak-like trees—live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called—which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eyes, shining in the firelight, appear at the edge. At the same moment there was a sound of scraping and scratching at some of the other holes. The roof was constructed of rough poles laid at short distances apart, and above these were small branches, on which was a sort of thatch of reeds and rushes. Standing close under one of the holes Beric could see nothing, but from the sound of the scratching he could tell from which side the wolf was at work enlarging it. He carefully thrust the point of his spear through the branches and ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... night peace brooded over the distracted city and the Cyprian stars looked down on the old, sweet story of mother and child—as closely clasped beneath the gilded roof of the royal palace as under the thatch of a peasant shed—smiling, forgetful of the days of anguish that ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... this matter of the boating mishap—he cursed himself now, as he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his dramatic itch—and now had paid for it with that idiotic story ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... your thatch is red! Slip out of your bed, sweet Anne! I have stolen a fairy buck," he said, "The first since ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the south of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who had lived pleasantly—a very dreadful thing. In the old agricultural days that had drawn to an end in the eighteenth century there had been a pretty proverb of love in a cottage; and indeed in those days the poor of the countryside had dwelt in flower-covered, diamond-windowed cottages of thatch and plaster, with the sweet air and earth about them, amidst tangled hedges and the song of birds, and with the ever-changing sky overhead. But all this had changed (the change was already beginning in the nineteenth century), and a new sort of life ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... mother was doubtful as to her daughter-in-law's project and even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet wife toiled unseen. The mother and husband patiently waited, until after a week, the little woman rejoined the family ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... threshold was somewhat worn; but upon the platform before it a large egg-shaped jar of unmistakable Chinese origin encased the roots of a flowing cactus that might have added a grace to the proudest palace in the Misty City. This was the modest portal of the Eyrie; ivy vines sheltered it like a dense thatch; ivy vines clung fast to a deep bay window that nearly filled one side of the library of the old mansion, now a living-room; ivy vines curtained the glazed wall of a conservatory where some one slept as in ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... disembarked. The duke himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the Norwegians; they ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is one street, with a ruined cross at one end and the church at the other, and the great hill over all. The cottages are as white as snowdrops, and they have heavy thatch roofs. The women wear large blue Worcestershire sunbonnets. The only shop is a post-office too, so that Robert was able to ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... is a beast, my dear one, With his paws he tears at the thatch, His breath is a curse and a warning, You can see it ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... which enormous sombrero I seated myself by him on the outside of the Weybridge coach, and amazed the gaping population of each successive village we passed through with the vast dimensions of the thatch I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... treatment. The friends and relations are then anointed, the turmeric being applied, however, to their left feet. The bow, arrows, da, and u star are carefully placed inside the inner surface of the thatch on the roof, and the ceremony is over. Rice flour is then distributed to all who are present, and the male adults are given liquor to drink. After two or three months the ears of the child are bored and ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... trench opposite had a chance at him. He advanced through a vast burrow. Trenches ran parallel, and other trenches cut across them. One could wander through them for miles. Most of them were uncovered, but others had roofs, partial or complete, of thatch or boards or canvas. Many had little alcoves and shelves, dug out by the patient hands of the soldiers, and these niches contained their ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mentioned, constructed of large blocks of stone so perfectly worked that the joints of the masonry were scarcely perceptible, but without ornament or adornment of any kind whatever, and roughly roofed with thatch. The exception was in the case of the temple, which, like so many in ancient Peru, was dedicated to the Sun. This structure was erected upon the summit of a low mound, scarcely important enough in height to be termed a hill, yet high enough to allow the building ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... English—I've seen them, spit the child on the mother's breast. I've seen them set fire to the thatch of the widow and childless. But this.... But this.... I can save you, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... left standing. While they gazed with wonder at the sight, and lamented the fate of their neighbors, that old house of theirs was changed into a TEMPLE. Columns took the place of the corner-posts, the thatch grew yellow and appeared a gilded roof, the floors became marble, the doors were enriched with carving and ornaments of gold. Then spoke Jupiter in benignant accents: "Excellent old man, and woman ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... stout leather hat, and ran down the street. Out came all the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same thing once before, on being scolded. There is no water but what runs down ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... stones, are often formed by two exterior surfaces of stone, filled up with earth in the middle, which makes them very warm. The roof is generally bad. They are thatched, sometimes with straw, sometimes with heath, sometimes with fern. The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a lady's hair in papers; but I should think that, when there is wind, they would come down, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... returning, late in the evening, too tired to put away my packages, had retired to rest at once. My little maid, who was not so fatigued as I was, and slept more lightly, woke me in the night to listen to a noise in the thatch, at the further end of the store; but I was so accustomed to hear the half-starved mules of Cruces munching my thatch, that I listened lazily for a few minutes, and then went unsuspiciously into another heavy sleep. I do not know how ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... steps leading to the top of the wall; from this the ascent to the house was easy, round which was a fine gravel walk. The house was built, in all respects, like to their common dwelling-houses; that is, with posts and rafters, and covered with palm thatch. The eaves came down within about three feet of the ground, which space was filled up with strong matting made of palm leaves, as a wall. The floor of the house was laid with fine gravel; except, in the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... thatch'd roof is seen The moss in tufts of liveliest green; When Roger to the wood pile goes, And, as he turns, his fingers blows; When all around is cold and drear, Be sure that Christmas-tide ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... besides," he continued, "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bivouacked by the brawling Jihun under a roof of thatch, whose walls were represented by more or less upright wooden posts and debris; for Kagig would not permit anything to stand even for an hour that Turks could come and fortify. None of us believed that the repulse of that handful of Kurdish plunderers and the capture of a Turkish colonel would ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this one feature judge what an expensive Herr. Streets were hung with cloth, carpeted with cloth, no end of draperies and cloth; your oppressed imagination feels as if there was cloth enough, of scarlet and other bright colors, to thatch the Arctic Zone. With illuminations, cannon-salvos, fountains running wine. Friedrich had made two Bishops for the nonce. Two of his natural Church-Superintendents made into Quasi-Bishops, on the Anglican model,—which was always a favorite with him, and a pious wish ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... remained where the sun had disappeared, and a deep-red glow was even now beginning to kindle where he was soon to rise. Just here, Hund's ear caught some tones of the soft harp music which the winds make in their passage through a wood of pines; and there was a fragrance in the air from a new thatch of birch-bark just laid upon a neighbouring roof. This fragrance, that faint vibrating music, and the soft veiled light were soothing; and when, besides, Hund pictured to himself his mind relieved by a confession to the good bishop—perhaps cheered by words of pardon and of promise, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... me, walking erect, and gravely held out a long and bony paw for me to shake. Then, as if satisfied that she had done all that hospitality demanded of her, she walked to the further end of the thatch verandah and stood there looking off into the forest, from which there came a few minutes later the most unearthly and yet most human ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... fell the matted, dusty hair. His tangled beard reached far below his waist. Even his eyebrows, naturally rather light, had grown to a heavy thatch above his eyes. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... not deceive yourself; they are not for the cow, but for the fool that lassoed the cow. And I promise you, Epifanio, that if it is not restored to me, this thatch over our heads will not be broad enough ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... head, an antiquated little town full of old maids and aged elms and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to be the changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had a more majestic spread, the weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss, and doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the burial-ground inscribed with names that had once been familiar in the village street; yet, summing up all the mischief that ten ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of the hatchets, Henry Burns proceeded to stretch a line between two trees; then interlacing the line, on a slant between other trees, he constructed a slight network; upon which, after an excursion amid the surrounding woods, he laid a sort of thatch of boughs. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... replied. "You don't suppose they would be such fools as that and, if they had, you don't suppose as I should be such a fool to split on 'em. Not likely. I ain't no desire to wake up, one night, and find the door fastened outside and the thatch on fire." ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... the upper part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid and swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... indeed looked very fertile, and the farmhouses very alluringly clean and neat, at least on the outside. They were not gray, as in the West of England, or brick as in the Southeast, but were of stone whitewashed, and the roofs were of slate, and not thatch or tile. As I have noted, they were not so much gathered into villages as in England, and again, as I have noted, it is out of such houses that the farmers' boys and girls go to the co-educational colleges of the Welsh ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... mountain village of K——, in Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No—a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep street, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and fringed with long grass, but rudely smoothed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various |
